


Again

by WahlBuilder



Series: Doctor and Thief [4]
Category: Thief (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:02:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5924214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so, it was ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Again

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Again - Доктор и Вор. История четвертая. Снова](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7389583) by [Altra_Realta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altra_Realta/pseuds/Altra_Realta)



So it was ending.

The whispers of poppies had died three days ago, and then the colours of the flowers fell down on the ground like old wallpaint and disappeared.

Two days ago, standing on the balcony of his house, Alec had witnessed the bridge being stripped of wholeness down to its faint outline, and then it had vanished shortly after.

Alec couldn't remember if the City stood on a river or near the sea.

It didn't matter anymore.

So, it was ending.

The City had lost his voice. There was no wailing or screams or laughter, and winds had been strangled to dying. The only noise left was an electric hum that never ended — a storm that would never come, a lightning that would never strike.

Alec witnessed people stopping in the middle of the street, and then they turned into a mass of shapes without colours and identity and faded a moment later.

Alec didn't come back inside his house. There was nothing inside, no smells of herbs and desease and hope, no blood patches on the floor, no creaking of doors.

Nothing.

Alec had been standing on the balcony — 'for hours', he could have said, but there was no time anymore.

He was watching. Witnessing.

Waiting.

Until he heard a soft sound of feet landing on the balcony, behind him, and caught a smell of leather, and there was a hissing and clicking of gears and machinery, and the calloused texture of fingers worn from using ropes, and the shocking warmth of another's body.

'What is hapening?' His voice was a rasp, and doubled like two people talking at once, and the electric hum stopped for a moment, making space for that voice.

It didn't stop for Alec's voice, though.

'It is ending.' He squeezed Garrett's fingers lightly, aching with a sudden need without any name. 'The last page is turned and the cover is closed. The lights are going out on the stage. The players are moving to the next game, and we are abandoned until they are drawn back by curiosity, boredom or love.'

The Clock Tower flickered like an old lamp, morphing into the shape of an ancient cathedral, and was turned off at last.

'We are just toys, then?' His voice was breathless, words rushing and stumbling over each other, and falling like white-blue petals. 'Plot points, story arcs, stains of paint on the wall?'

Alec smiled. 'Maybe you are the player, Garrett, or the character a player plays, the face on the cover, the hand that writes a journal. I cannot say, my friend. But so, it is ending.'

He turned to look into pleading eyes, one of singing, shimmering blue and changing into shifting gears the next moment only to weep trails of blue once again. A flicker of imagination, the name printed ten thousand times, a whisper in the dark, the outline in shadows.

'What will happen?'

Alec smiled once more. 'We will dissolve into static, pressed close to other pages as the paper turns old and soft and yellow. And then, it will begin anew. The same story, again and again.'

'Will we meet again?'

'It a twist of the plot. Yes, Garret, we will meet again.'

'Promise?'

Looking into hopeful eyes of the City, Alec nodded. 'I promise.'

And so, it ended.

 

 

 

 

 

The City never slept.

It never slept, it screamed and raged and thrashed, its bones crumbling under the guards’ feet, breaking with dry sounds. Echoes walked in shadows of the streets, echoes clad in darkness and death and famine.

The City’s screams and cries woke Alec up almost every night, the City’s heart banging on his door, its moans of pain filling his ears.

 The City raged and hurt and pained, no matter how hard Alec tried to heal it, to soothe its pain with his hands, his scalpel, with his words when nothing else could save a life.


End file.
